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Tag: relationships

  • The Power of a Question

    The Power of a Question

    Mitch Vandiver (at mitch@strategiescorp.net.) and The Strategies, Inc. Team put this together, and I thought it was perfect for my readers – it’s all about asking the right questions . . .

    Michael J. Marquardt, author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask says, “You don’t have to have the answer to ask a great question. A great question will ultimately get an answer.”

    A school teacher shared this story. One day, as the children played at recess, a usually very calm, good-natured little boy hit a little girl, who was his best friend. The playground monitors rushed over as the little girl stood crying. One monitor immediately reprimanded the boy in an angry voice, “You can’t hit other people. That’s wrong! What were you thinking?! And, boys don’t hit girls!”

    Now, both children stood sobbing. The other playground monitor sat down with the children and asked only one question of the little boy, “Why did you hit her?” Through tears, he explained, “There was a bee on her and I didn’t want my friend to get stung.” The monitor glanced down and, indeed, laying on the ground by the little girl, was a bee.

    What a difference a great question can make! This true story is a brilliant metaphor for the times we should have asked more questions and didn’t.

    Effective and empowering questions serve several proposes:

    1. They create clarity – What did you learn about the little boy through one question?

    2. They construct better relationships – How did your opinion of the little boy shift when you understood his reason?

    3. They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways and encourage breakthrough thinking – What would you ask the little boy to help him find other solutions to protecting his friend from bees?

    4. They challenge assumptions – What assumptions did the first playground monitor make? How did those change with one question?

    Open-ended questions do not seek specific answers. They allow curiosity and exploration. Good opened-ended questions can start with what, how, when, where, who, tell me, or I wonder.

    Great questions benefit organizations, teams, and employees by minimizing miscommunication from making assumptions, changing points of view, stimulating creativity, engaging critical thinking, developing ownership of issues, and encouraging problem solving ability.

    What great questions will you ask of others today?

  • Do Your Clients Know You, or Just What You’ve Reminded Them Of Recently?

    Do Your Clients Know You, or Just What You’ve Reminded Them Of Recently?

    Service businesses are funny things sometimes. Clients tend to pigeonhole your service firm based on what service you first performed for them. They rarely actually read the literature you leave behind, especially if it’s a referral, and they usually don’t go back and search it when another type of job arises, no matter how closely related to the first. So your first impression, your first engagement and your referrals tend to shape your brand for you in the customer’s mind, unless you steer it, expand it and broaden it on an almost continual basis.

    It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially for smaller firms, who may appear more limited than they are. I’m no exception to this unfortunately, although I try and avoid it if I can. I have one customer who only thinks of me in connection with trade show displays, because that was the first part of a multi-faceted strategy we recommended for them when entering into a new vertical market. Not that she doesn’t KNOW we offer a full range of marketing services, from strategic planning out to campaign execution and executive guidance, it’s just that I don’t reside in that part of her brain and I’m not connected to her other needs in a way that immediately comes to mind when they arise – I have to make a concerted effort to “remind” her that we are a full-service firm, so that we get connected in that way.

    How many of your customers or internal clients only think of you when they need or have a question about a very narrow range of elements, the one you did for them last, or first? It’s something you might want to explore, and you can test it pretty easily: Call them up and ask “Do you know that we also offer . . .” and see what the response is. Call under the auspices of keeping in touch, a good thing regardless, but hunt for that specific piece of data during the conversation. You might be surprised by the result.

    It may seem strange, but that’s just how the brain works – humans learned to survive by recognizing and remembering patterns, and noticing anything that breaks the pattern, like sensing movement in the brush created by a prey animal. Once a pattern is established, ala your firm performing a certain service, that pattern is retained and it’s difficult to change that perception.

    Here’s the fix: broaden your marketing efforts. Don’t go against brand, in fact if you’re a multi-service firm, this will strengthen that tenet of your brand. But highlight a different angle, a different aspect or subgroup of your offerings in a series of marketing launches – it’s like baiting a fishing line with different baits at different parts of the line – you increase the odds of catching something from the same pond. Even if you think you only offer one thing, and one of your brand characteristics is that you do one thing and do it the best of anyone, there are still different angles and facets of that “one thing” that you can use to “bait the hook” with. Try it, see if you don’t get the phone ringing with new business from old clients who “Didn’t know you offered that”.

    Did you find this interesting? Would you like to read more? Subscribe to this blog above – its FREE! Don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes” 

     

  • Sometimes Business Growth Doesn’t Mean More Customers

    Sometimes Business Growth Doesn’t Mean More Customers

    In our daily consulting practice, we see the inside of businesses all over the country, and can make some fairly educated observations about how they run. Small businesses especially are having a tough time running smoothly, in a couple of aspects, operationally and financially.

    Smaller businesses, especially service businesses like landscapers, technology companies, contractors painters and other building trades, are having trouble securing loans from local banks to use for working capital or expansion, new equipment, bigger crews, more workers. This type of business often has ebbs and flows in cash availability, either due to seasonality of their business or the size and nature of their work and their customers. Occasionally they need some extra capitol on a short term basis to make payroll and keep good people on the employee rolls until they are needed for the next big job. If they can’t get that extra money, they are forced to cut other staff, benefits or worse, close down temporarily. This up and down cycle, when not mitigated by some cash flow injections, can eventually destroy a small business, even one that is well managed.

    1)  Qualified Staff Shortage. Operationally, this cash flow issue changes the dynamic among the core of employees, and causes the other problem this type of business faces: scarcity of qualified staff and an employee pool too shallow. If the threat of being laid off comes repeatedly to the rank and file, word spreads in the industrial community and you will have a hard time recruiting good employees. The stress caused by the impending downsize can negatively affect productivity, loyalty and other critical areas of performance.

    2)  Reduced Risk Profile Stifles Growth. That lack of cash flow can also have a negative effect on management decisions as well. If you’re not sure you can fill that cash gap, but have receivables out there and the next big job is in the pipeline, management will still be reluctant to hire additional employees even when they’re needed. This reduces risk-taking, limits growth and expansion, and slows movement among the employees. Mentoring behavior slows or stops, training dries up, and the whole works can come to a virtual standstill, largely out of fear of that “big job gap”.

    3)  Know When To Let Go.  The third but highly overlooked issue for small businesses these days is making the transition from founder-lead, to goal-driven enterprise. Usually smaller businesses are started by a single individual, who has a skill or a talent. They are successful using those skills and the business grows. They hire some semi-skilled workers to help in specific areas, but the founder still acts as president, chief cook and bottle washer, wearing a huge number of hats on the managerial and administrative side, and still doing the principal work at the same time. If they get caught in this loop for very long, performance suffers, crucial but routine admin work often gets missed or lies fallow for long periods, customer service suffers and eventually work quality will suffer.

    The way to break the cycle is for the owner to know when it’s time to find a trusted team to run the jobs and they move over to take a more strategic role. Its a different skill set, but one that can be learned. Finding that team is becoming increasingly difficult, and this is one of the biggest single issues facing small businesses and impeding their growth. Advice for job-seekers out there – look at your skills and experiences and frame them in such a way as to make you attractive to someone seeking a clone of themselves – make yourself appear trustworthy and indispensable, and you’ll get hired in a second.

    Growth from within, building a team, creating a chain of command, putting in place a management structure and policies that foster growth, innovation, initiative and empowerment are just as valuable as building up the customer list, and are a form of growth on their own.

    If you found this valuable and would like to find out more, pick up a copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”

     

  • Good Customer Service MAKES Your Company Money

    Good Customer Service MAKES Your Company Money

    One of the hallmarks of a strong b-to-c company is the reputation of their customer service approach. Think how much the CS interaction defines the brand for customers. As an example, two companies highlight this clearly – L.L. Bean = Good! Comcast = Bad.

    Comcast may be delivering an outstanding, clear, signal over a vast network of installations, over 99% of the operating time – a competitively good product in many people’s eyes. But mention their name to a customer who’s had a problem, no matter how minor, that they tried to resolve over the phone, and they will inevitably bend your ear for an hour about how hard it was to communicate and get issues resolved quickly and effectively. Horror stories abound, and multiply daily.

    Now, mention L.L. Bean to a customer who’s tried to send something back, or return something to a retail outlet, and they will smile and say that it couldn’t have been easier, and they were nice about it. Bean ships globally to millions of customers a year, from a huge fulfillment facility with hundreds of different products, sizes, colors, styles and variations, leading to millions of pick-and-pack combinations for a given order. Inevitably mistakes occur, but it’s how they handle them that matters to customers. Their policy is that they will take returns of their merchandise and refund or replace, no questions asked. They LIVE that policy every day, and it shows.

    If your marketing department is working in concert with your customer service department as they should be, your company can harness the power of the CS relationship with customers to build your reputation, and polish your brand to it’s desired brilliance. If they’re not, you could be languishing in the basement with the likes of those who outsource their CS, ignore complaints, abuse customers, and lose revenue as a result.

    Customers will tell you some amazing things, about your own products, sometimes even come up with new uses for your products that you can use to market them! But you have to build in the mechanism for that information to find it’s way up to those who can use it.

    Good customer service starts with the ability to empower CS personnel to resolve problems immediately and effectively. The customer is not the enemy, but you’d be surprised how many CS depts treat them that way. It’s not about policy, its about people. They don’t have to be all sweetness and light, but they should be professional, reasonable, helpful and genuinely want to assist the customer. If the response they are trained to offer includes the words “our policy won’t allow for that” – rewrite the policy and retrain the whole crew – it’s defensive, it’s confrontational, its antithetical to “serving” the customer.

    Think how many evangelists you’d create if each and every customer interaction was a positive one. How many upsells, how much pass along, how many influencers would you create in the world if every time your company touched a customer, they came away better off for the effort. Think of the sales increase you’ll create, what that would do to the lifetime value of a customer! You can effectively take what is commonly treated as an overhead item and turn it into a profit center, with a few adjustments to the training, scripting and approach of your customer service team.

    Tell us your worst customer service stories, and we’ll share them and use them to help make better companies with them.

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    Also, don’t forget to pick up your copy of “The Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes”